This invention relates to an apparatus for automatically laying out a stocking, collant or the like, for visual inspection and possible treatment thereof.
It is well known that knitted hose articles, particularly stockings, collants and the like, have to be stretched out after manufacture thereof in order to check for manufacturing defects and to provide for subjecting them to possible treatments, such as drying, finish treatments or the like.
At present this stocking and collant stretching out operation is manually carried out, by superimposing rigid forms into the stockings and collants, on which the latter are manually stretched out.
The stockings and collants are then removed from these rigid forms for delivery to further treatments.
The prior art suffers from substantial drawbacks, primarily that the stocking loading and stretching out operation on the supporting forms requires considerable time, thus resulting in a low hourly output of controlled stockings and a considerable increase in production costs thereof.